Napoleon Hill - Keys to Success

(...other chapters...)

The 17 Principles Of Success

Develop Definiteness Of Purpose

The Starting Point of All Worthwhile Achievements

You should have one high, desirable, outstanding goal, and keep it ever before you. You can have many nonconflicting goals which help you to reach your major definite goal. It is advisable to have immediate, intermediate, and distant objectives. When you set a definite major goal, you are apt to recognize that which will help you achieve it.

• Determine or fix in your mind exactly what you desire. Be definite.
• Evaluate and determine exactly what you will give in return.
• Set a definite date for exactly when you intend to possess your desire.
• Identify your desire with a definite plan for carrying out and achieving your objective. Put your plan into action at once.
• Clearly define your plan for achievement. Write out precisely and concisely exactly what you want, exactly when you want to achieve it, and exactly what you intend to give in return.
• Each and every day, morning and evening, read your written statement aloud. As you read it, see, feel, and believe yourself already in possession of your objective.
• Engage in personal inspection with regularity to determine whether you are on the right track and headed in the right direction so that you don't deviate from the path that leads to the achievement of your objective.
• To guarantee success, engage daily in study, thinking, and planning time with Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) regarding yourself and your family and how you can achieve your definite goals.

Whatever your mind can conceive and believe, you can achieve - when you have PMA and apply it.

Establish A Mastermind Alliance

A mastermind alliance is two or more minds working together in the spirit of perfect harmony toward the attainment of a specific objective.

This principle makes it possible for you, through association with others, to acquire and utilize the knowledge and experience needed for the attainment of any desired goal in life.

Your mastermind alliance can be created by surrounding yourself or aligning yourself with the advice, counsel, and personal cooperation of several people who are willing to lend you their wholehearted aid for the attainment of your objective in the spirit of perfect harmony.

You can create a mastermind alliance with your spouse, your manager, a friend, a coworker, etc. Once a mastermind alliance is formed, the group as a whole must become and remain active. The group must move in a definite plan, at a definite time, toward a definite common objective. Indecision, inactivity, or delay will destroy the usefulness of the alliance. There must be a complete meeting of the minds without reservations on the part of any member.

You can have several mastermind alliances, each with different objectives - i.e., an alliance with your spouse to reach your family objectives, an alliance with your banker or investment counselor or attorney for your financial objectives, an alliance with your minister or clergy for your spiritual objectives, etc.

Assemble An Attractive Personality

Your personality is your greatest asset or greatest liability, for it embraces everything that you control: mind, body, and soul. A person's personality is the person. It shapes the nature of your thoughts, your deeds, your relationships with others, and it establishes the boundaries of the space you occupy in the world.

• It is essential that you develop a pleasing personality - pleasing to yourself and to others.
• It is imperative that you develop the habit of being sensitive to your own reactions to individuals, circumstances, and events and to the reactions of individuals and groups to what you say, think, or do.

• Positive Factors of a Pleasing Personality
  A positive mental attitude	Sportsmanship
  Tolerance	Sincerity
  Alertness	A sense of humor
  Common courtesy	Humility of the hearth
  A fondness for people	Smiling
  Flexibility	Enthusiasm
  Tactfulness	Control of temper & emotions
  Personal magnetism	Patience
  A pleasant tone of voice	Proper dress
  Control of facial expressions

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Use Applied Faith

Faith is a state of mind through which your aims, desires, plans, and purposes may be translated into their physical or financial equivalent.

Applied faith means action - specifically, the habit of applying your faith under any and all circumstances. It is faith in your God, yourself, your fellowman - and the unlimited opportunities available to you.

Faith without action is dead. Faith is the art of believing by doing. It comes as a result of persistent action. Fear and doubt are faith in reverse gear. Faith, in its positive application, is the key which will give one direct communications with Infinite Intelligence.

Applied faith is belief in an objective or purpose backed by unqualified activity. If you want results, try a prayer. When you pray, express your gratitude, and thanksgiving for the blessings you have received; then ask the Good Lord for his help. Affirm the objectives of your desires through prayer each night and morning. Inspire your imagination to see yourself already in possession of them, and act precisely as if you were already in physical possession of them. The possession of anything first takes place mentally by being imagined in the mind's eye.

Prayer is your greatest power!

Go The Extra Mile

Render more and better service for which you are paid, and do it with a positive mental attitude. Form the habit of going the extra mile because of the pleasure you get out of it inside. It is inevitable that every seed of useful service you sow will multiply itself and come back to you in overwhelming abundance.

Following this principle will make you indispensable to other people. The principle manifests itself in two important laws: the Law of Compensation and the Law of Increasing Returns. These unvarying laws always reward intelligent effort rendered in the attitude of faith and rendered instinctively without regards to the limits of immediate compensation.

Q * Q + Q * Q + MA = C

The quality of the service rendered plus the quantity of the service rendered plus the mental attitude in which it is rendered equals your compensation in the world and the amount of space you will occupy in the hearts of your fellow man.

Make going the extra mile with PMA a habit!

Create Personal Initiative

Personal initiative is the inner power that starts all action. It is the power that inspires the completion of that which one begins. It is the dynamo that starts the faculty of the imagination into action.

It is, in fact, Self-motivation.

Motivation is that which induces action or determines choice. It is that which provides a motive. A motive is that inner urge only within the individual which incites you to action, such as an idea, an emotion, a desire, or an impulse. It is a hope or other force which starts in an attempt to produce specific results.

When you know principles that can motivate you, you will then know principles that can motivate others.

Motivate yourself with PMA. Hope is the magic ingredient in motivation, but the secret of accomplishment is getting into action.

Use and develop the self-starter. Do it now!

Build A Positive Mental Attitude

PMA stands for positive mental attitude.

A positive mental attitude is the right, honest, constructive thought, action or reaction to any person, situation, or set of circumstances that does not violate the laws of God or the right of one's fellowman.

PMA allows you to build on hope and overcome the negative attitudes of despair and discouragement. It gives you the mental power, the feeling, the confidence to do anything you make up your mind to do. PMA is commonly referred to as the "I can ... I will" attitude applicable to all challenging circumstances in your life.

You create and maintain a positive mental attitude through your own willpower, based on motives of your own adaption. To develop PMA, strive to understand and apply the Golden Rule; be considerate and sensitive to the reactions of emotional responses; be a good finder; believe that any goal can be achieved; and develop what are understood to be right habits of thought and action.

A positive mental attitude is the catalyst necessary for achieving worthwhile success. Achievement is attained through some combination of PMA and definiteness of purpose with one or more of the other fifteen success principles.

Maintain the right attitude - a positive mental attitude.

Control Your Enthusiasm

A person without enthusiasm is like a watch without a mainspring. Father John O'Brien, research professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, says, "The 1st ingredient which I believe is absolutely necessary for a successful, efficient, and competent individual is enthusiasm." He adds, "Enthusiasm comes from the Greek words that let you look into the root of this world - into its basic, fundamental and original meaning. The 1st is theos, which means God. The other two words are en-Tae, so that in the early usage of this term of the ancient Greeks, it literally meant, 'God within you'." Further: "No battle of any importance can be won without enthusiasm."

To become enthusiastic about achieving a desirable goal, keep your mind on that goal day after day. The more worthy and desirable your objectives, the more dedicated and enthusiastic you will become. Understand and act on William James statement: "The emotions are not always immediately subject to reason but they are always immediately subject to ACTION." (Emphasis added.) Enthusiasm thrives on a positive mind and positive action. This is the key to controlling your enthusiasm: always give it a worthy goal to focus on and once you have channelled it toward that goal, it will carry you forward.

Real enthusiasm comes from within. However, enthusiasm is like getting water from a well; 1st you have to prime the pump but soon the water flows and flows and flows. You can be enthusiastic about everything and anything you know or do. Enthusiasm is a PMA characteristic. It can be generated naturally from one's thoughts, feelings and emotions, but more important, it can be generated at will.

To be enthusiastic ... Act enthusiastically!

Enforce Self-Discipline

• Self-discipline enables you to develop control over yourself. Self-discipline begins with mastery of your thoughts, what you really are, what you really do. Your failures and your successes are the results of habits. We are creatures of habit, but because we are minds with bodies, we can change our habits.
• Self-discipline is perhaps the most important function in aiding an individual in the development and maintenance of habits of thought which enable that person to fix his or her entire attention upon any desired purpose and to hold it there until that purpose has been attained.
• If you do not control your thoughts, you do not control your deeds. Think 1st and act afterward. Self-discipline is the principle by which you may voluntarily shape the patterns of your thoughts to harmonize with your goals and purposes.

Direct your thoughts, control your emotions, ordain your destiny with PMA.

Think Accurately

Accurate thinking is based on two major fundamentals:

1. Inductive reasoning, based on the assumption of unknown facts or hypotheses.
2. Deductive reasoning, based on known facts or what are believed to be facts.

In school we are taught deductive and inductive reasoning and the fallacy that results in starting with the wrong premise in the one instance and making the wrong inference in the other. Accurate thinking and common sense are in part the result of experiences. You can learn from your own experiences as well as those of others when you learn how to recognize, relate, assimilate, and apply principles in order to achieve goals.

1. Separate facts from fiction or hearsay evidence.
2. Separate facts into classes: important and unimportant.

Be careful of other's opinions. They could be dangerous and destructive. Make sure your opinions are not someone else's prejudices. The accurate thinker learns to use his or her own judgment and to be cautious no matter who may endeavor to influence him or her.

Truth will be truth regardless of a closed mind, ignorance, or refusal to believe.

Control Your Attention

Controlled attention is organized mind power. It is the highest form of self-discipline. Controlled attention is the act of coordinating all the facilities of the mind and directing their combined power to a given end or definite objective. It is an act that can be obtained only by the strictest sort of self-discipline.

It is obvious, therefore, that when you voluntarily fix your attention upon a definite major purpose of a positive nature and force your mind through your daily habits of thought to dwell on the subject, you condition your subconscious mind to act on that purpose. Controlled attention, when it is focused upon the object of your definite major purpose, is a medium by which you make positive application of the principle of suggestion.

The mind never remains inactive, not even during sleep. It works continuously by reactions to the influences which reach it. Therefore, the object of controlled attention is that of keeping your mind busy with thought material which may be helpful in attaining the object of your desire.

Controlled attention is self-mastery of the highest order, for it is an accepted fact that the person who controls his or her own mind may control everything else.

Keep your mind on the things you want and off the things you don't want.

Inspire Teamwork

Teamwork is a willing cooperation and the coordination of effort to achieve a specific objective. When the spirit of teamwork is willing, voluntary, and free, it leads to the attainment of great and enduring power.

It is a system which coordinates all the team players' resources and talents and automatically discourages dishonesty and unfairness, while it adequately compensates the individuals who serve honestly and unselfishly.

The principle of teamwork differs from the mastermind principle in that it is based on the coordination of effort without necessarily embracing principle of definiteness of purpose or the principle of harmony, two important essentials of the mastermind.

Teamwork produces power, but the question of whether the power is temporary or permanent depends on the motive that inspired the cooperation. If the motive is one that inspires people to cooperate willingly, the power produced by this sort of teamwork will endure as long as that spirit of willingness prevails.

Teamwork builds individuals and businesses and provides unlimited opportunity for all. It is sharing a part of what you have - a part that is good - with others.

That which you share will multiply; that which you withhold will diminish.

Learn From Adversity & Defeat

• Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit for those who have PMA and apply it.
• Defeat may be a stepping-stone or a stumbling block, according to your mental attitude and how you relate it to yourself.
• It is never the same as failure unless and until it has been accepted as such.
• Your mental attitude in respect to defeat is the factor of major importance which determines whether you ride with tides of fortune or misfortune. The person with a positive mental attitude reacts to defeat in the spirit of determination not to accept it. The person with a negative mental attitude reacts to defeat in the spirit of hopeless acceptance.

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing that can happen to you if you don't let it get the best of you.

Cultivate Creative Vision

Man's greatest gift is his thinking mind. It analyzes, compares, chooses. It creates, visualizes, foresees, and generates ideas.

• Imagination is your mind's exercise, challenge, and adventure. It is the key to all of a person's achievements, the mainspring of all human endeavor, the secret door to the soul of a person. Imagination inspires human endeavor in connection with material things and ideas associated with material things.
• Imagination is the workshop of the human mind, where old ideas and established facts may be assembled into new combinations and put to new uses. It is the act of constructive intellect in the grouping of materials, knowledge, or thoughts into new, original, and rational systems, a constructive or creative faculty embracing poetic, artistic, philosophical, scientific, and ethical imagination.
• Creative vision may be an inborn quality of the mind or an acquired quality, for it may be developed by the free and fearless use of the faculty of imagination.
• Creative vision extends beyond interest in material things. It judges the future by the past and concerns itself with the future more than with the past. Imagination is influenced and controlled by the powers of reason and experience. Creative vision pushes these aside and attains its ends by basically new ideas and methods.

One of the ways to increase your flow of ideas is developing the habit of taking study time, thinking time, and planning time. Be quiet and motionless, and listen for that small, still voice that speaks from within as you contemplate the ways in which you can achieve your objectives.

What can be conceived can be created - with PMA.

Maintain Sound Health

You are a mind with a body. Inasmuch as your brain controls your body, recognize that sound physical health demands a positive mental attitude, a health consciousness. Establish good, well-balanced health habits in work, play, rest, nourishment, and study. To maintain a health consciousness, think in terms of good physical health, not in terms of illness or disease. Remember, what your mind focuses upon, your mind brings into existence, whether it is financial success or physical health.

To maintain a positive attitude for the development and maintenance of a sound health consciousness, use self-discipline, keep your mind free of negative thoughts and influence, and create and maintain a well-balanced life. Follow work with play, mental effort with physical effort, seriousness with humor, and you will be on the road to good health and happiness.

A sound mind and a sound body are attainable if you will put PMA to work for you. Remember, you can enjoy good health and live longer with PMA.

I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!

Budget Your Time & Money

• Intelligently balance your use of time and resources, both business and personal. Take inventory of yourself and your activities so that you discover where and how you are spending your time and your money.
• Engage in study, thinking, and planning time.
• Don't waste your time or your money. 10% of all you earn is yours to keep and invest. Like any good business, budget your money. Use your time wisely toward attainment of your objectives. Develop a plan for the use of your income for expenses, savings, and investments.

You don't always get what you expect unless you inspect - with PMA.

Use Cosmetic Habitforce

Cosmic habitforce pertains to the entire universe and is the law by which the equilibrium of the universe is maintained through established patterns or habits. It is the law which forces every living creature and every particle of matter to come under the dominating influence of its environment, including the physical habits and thought habits of humankind.

Cosmic habitforces are the power which you apply with PMA when you use the universal laws or principles. Cosmic habitforces are employed when you use your mind powers whether they pertain to your conscious or subconscious mind. That is how you think and grow richer or achieve anything in life you desire (in principle) that doesn't violate the laws of God or the rights of your fellowman.

All of us are ruled by habits. These are fastened upon us by repeated thoughts and experiences. You have complete right of control over your thoughts. We create patterns of thought by repeating certain ideas or behavior until the Law of Cosmic Habitforce takes over those patterns and makes them more or less permanent unless or until you consciously rearrange them.

Habits: You have them - some good, perhaps others bad. Many you are aware of, but some that are undesirable you are blinded to. Each begins in your mind consciously or subconsciously. And each can be developed and neutralized or changed at will through the proper use of your mind. You have this power.

You are ruled by your habits. It takes a habit to replace a habit. Develop positive habits that will be in harmony with the achievement of your definite purpose or goal.

Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit, and you reap a character. Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

Posted on 22nd September 2007 by Quintus Hegie

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